Parallels For Mac Offers A Solution

This enabled me to copy the entire Windows installation from my PC to the Mac over the local network, with all our documents, etc, intact.

As you may imagine, the copy process took a very long time over Wifi (3 or 4 hours, if memory serves), but it got there in the end.

More importantly, it still worked.

The Parallels software took me through the entire process, including setting up the “disk image” of Windows, before copying it across the network.

Once safely on the Mac, the Parallels wizard asked me various questions about how I wanted to run Windows.

It asked me whether I wanted to share my Windows files with the Mac, and vice versa.

I started it up for the first time – noting that it was quicker booting Windows than it had been on the PC – and voila!

There was a complete copy of my old PC, with everything still in place.

I told Parallels to use their so called “coherence mode”, which enables Windows programs to run as though they are Mac programs.

When they run like this, they also save all documents in the same place as native Mac documents.

This means that you can still find everything where you would expect it to be.

This has worked pretty well, for the most part.

In Coherence mode, the Windows Start menu appears as an extra menu in the Mac Dock.

When I click a program such as Word, Parallels automatically starts Windows (if it’s not already running) and the Word window appears just as it would on a PC.

Parallels Suspended Animation

Once finished, you can suspend Windows instead of shutting it down.

This means that next time, it will start up quicker, but you can save some processing power in the interim.

After all, Windows is running as a “machine within a machine”, so could slow down your Mac, while it is still active.

We did have some early teething troubles when other user accounts on the Mac were unable to start Windows, but a friend helped me fix it.

For some reason, the permissions on the migrated disk image weren’t quite right, but we soon sorted that out.

I think it was related to the iMac being second hand, with previous settings, rather than an issue in Parallels itself.

With that out of the way, we were happy enough with this state of affairs.

I therefore bought the full version of Parallels when the trial expired.

This was just a case of getting a registration code and entering it in the Parallels menu option – no further installation tasks needed.

It Just Works – Mostly

The Mac desktop itself definitely “just works”.

It has slowed down a little as I have added more stuff to it, but it has never once crashed on me.

Parallels gave us a reasonably pain free way of running Office 2007.

I have to give proper credit to them for making the migration process seem less technical than I feared.

I think that most non-technical people would be able to follow their wizard without too many worries, but then I am a techie person, so perhaps I am biased.

Just remember, if you want to do the same, make sure you have everything backed up first.
I still feel Parallels is relatively expensive (though still cheaper than Office for Mac, etc), but overall is worth it for the ease with which we were able to move across.

It has occasionally done odd things, such as dropping out of coherence mode with no real explanation, or failing to open up a program first time.

However, a quick restart of Windows/Parallels soon has things going again.

I have also found to my frustration, that the Mac keyboard shortcuts I an now used to, don’t always work properly in Word.

I’ll let my kids keep using Word for their homework, while I do the odd document in Pages and export it to DOCX format instead.

Aside from those hiccups though, it has performed flawlessly.

Windows running inside a Mac, giving us access to the best of both worlds.

I suspect that we will eventually find full Mac replacements for all the programs we need, but it is nice to know we can do that at our own pace.

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